This was my first all bike event. Some friends and I decided to do this race for our first one since it was close. At first we thought about doing a shorter distance. There were a couple available. 85 was the initial thought...we had met for lunch to talk about it. When I got home I sent my friend an message saying I really wanted to do the 111 miles since she and I had already done 85 and it was like 6 weeks away from the race. She was totally up for it. There were 5 of us, 3 did the 111 and 2 did the 85.
We had matching jerseys and we looked pretty pro! Because it was our first year and our first race we had to start near the back of the enormous group of cyclists. As a result I guess we were quite a bit faster than we thought we would be because the whole time we were passing people. It was totally good for our egos! BUT because we were faster than all those other people we couldn't draft off anyone very long...so I think we ended up riding a lot harder than we had to. Actual ride time without the stops was 6 hours and 30 minutes...add in the stops...which were ridiculously LONG sometimes we were at 8 hours and 5 min. We learned a lot and now we are looking for our next race!!!
